Directed By: Adrian Garcia Boliano and Ramiro Garcia Boliano Written By: Adrian Garcia Boliano and Ramiro Garcia Boliano Run Time: 85 minutes Penumbra, half-light or semidarkness in Spanish, is an Argentinean horror film which punishes its main actress for her character’s distain of Argentina unrelentingly. Marga (Cristina Bondo) is a high powered lawyer in Spain [...]
Directed by Tod Williams, 2010 Written by Michael R. Perry PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 may just be one of the best horror movie surprises of the year. Obviously it is destined to be a hit after the massive success of the first film, which is the kind of movie that even if you hated, you had to [...]
Piranha 3D is a horror movie bar mitzvah. It turns boys into men, cleaving their lives into two distinct periods: Before Piranha 3D, a time we shall refer to as The Darkness, and after Piranha 3D, also known as The Awakening. Now that I have thankfully awoken in its glorious elysian fields of excessive gore and outrageous [...]
Directed by Breck Eisner, 2010 Written by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright You’re forgiven for being apprehensive about a remake of THE CRAZIES, George Romero’s classic (as in age, not quality) bit of ’70s violence and paranoia. I know I was. After all, we live in a climate where studio (not talent) driven remakes arrive [...]
Directed by Martin Scorsese, 2010 Written by Laeta Kalogridis If you’re already planning on seeing SHUTTER ISLAND this weekend, don’t read beyond. If you’re on the fence on seeing what it looks like when Martin Scorsese makes a horror movie, know that it is absolutely worth seeing, but do not read any further. It’s impossible [...]
[Because I wish even the most skeptical of skeptics would experience this on the big screen, I'm plugging my SFS review of Avatar here. And also because this is my site and I do what I wants.] The buzz and buzzkill leading up to Avatar, it turns out, found inadequate purchase now that the world [...]
Written and Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, 2009 When I first saw the trailer for DAYBREAKERS, the Spierig brother’s follow-up to their freshman film UNDEAD, I thought two things about their take on a world overrun by vampires in dire need of some new human blood. First, that looks a hell of a [...]
Written and Directed by Ti West, 2009 Time for some rumor control. Contrary to what one would assume watching The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West does not have the power to bend time and space to his will. Ti West is not a time lord, he is a mere mortal like the rest [...]
Written by Marcus Hearn Published by Titan Books. Hammer Studios doesn’t really get the credit they deserve for creating the modern scream queen. Our recent horror beauties like Julianna Guill and Betsy Rue owe a debt of gratitude to the British studio, who pioneered the inclusion of gratuitous cheesecake forevermore into horror films, for better [...]
Directed by Neill Blomkamp, 2009 Written by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell DISTRICT 9 will end up being one of the most remembered films of 2009, as well it should be. Not because it’s perfect, sorry to say, but because it’s a barrier breaker. For the hardened fans of fantastic cinema, D9 will be a [...]
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, 1987 Written by Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red Welcome back to AYIF. Today I am watching a cult classic vampire film from the 1980′s. One of my favorite movies of all time is THE LOST BOYS (another film of this ilk) and I long ago added NEAR DARK to my must-see [...]
Written and Directed by J.T. Petty, 2008 It took a movie about subterranean carnivores to dig me out of the sodding horror rut of spring. I’m kind of geeking out right now, as a matter of record. The past three or so weeks have found the playlist slogged with amateur productions possessing a death grip [...]
LEFT 4 DEAD Produced and Developed by Valve Corporation Given my recent reviews and trailer impressions, it seems only fitting a zombie apocalypse game should come around that I get to review. Being a PC gamer, there is some bias in favor of Valve and everything they make. Ask any PC Gamer and they will [...]
Created by Charlie Brooker, 2008 “DEAD SET” may be one of my favorite horror productions of 2008 if only because it would never exist in the United States. Shot, cast and set largely in and around the “BIG BROTHER” house in England, “DEAD SET” is a five part miniseries chronicling a zombie apocalypse whose eve [...]
Directed by Ole Bornedal, 2007 Written by Ole Bornedal, Henrik Prip There is a lot in this world I do not have a full grasp of. Quantum computing, fluid dynamics, the undetermined arrival of The Singularity, chirality, and John McCain. But the angry living dead aside, there is much I have taken the reins on, [...]
No, that is not a typo in the title, for the first time ever HND has multiple reviews for the same item. Today we talk DEAD SPACE, a survival horror video game on 360, PS3 and PC from Electronic Arts. I’ve always wanted to have multiple perspectives on the same thing run at the same [...]
Directed by Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza, 2007 Written by Jaume Balagueró, Luis Berdejo, Paco Plaza There is a cold efficiency to [REC] that I never imagined I would admire from a film. It has no character development. None whatsoever. Zip. Zero. Nunca. [REC] is a conveyor belt horror film, a linear path one steps on [...]
Directed by Matt Reeves, 2007Written by Drew Goddard The bittersweet truth of Cloverfield is that the fans were right and the filmmakers were wrong half-right. With the materialization of a vague teaser trailer before Transformers, JJ Abrams opened the gates to an empty amusement park and proceeded to tell no one what they were allowed [...]
Directed by Richard Schenkman, 2007Written by Jerome Bixby In my November DVD guide I said this of The Man From Earth: Lastly what I’m going to go ahead and call the genre release of the month. An indie film I’ve written about before: The Man From Earth. It is a straight Sci-Fi story with classic [...]
Directed by Chukiat Sakweerakul, 2006Written by Chukiat Sakweerakul, based on the comic by Eakasit Thairatana 13 Beloved is not a horror movie. It is a dark, brutal comedy with a plot that should fit snugly into the heart of any genre fan. I’m not sure it has the international notoriety, yet, but I firmly believe [...]
Created by Tim Seeley For the past week and a half I’ve been relatively immobilized by minor surgery. It has been a pain in the ass, quite literally as that is where a doctor created the Mariana Trench out of my flesh, but one of the advantages of being couch bound is I get to [...]
Directed by Danny Boyle, 2007Written by Alex Garland Confession: I like Sci-Fi more than I do Horror. Considerably more, actually, but true Science Fiction, good or bad, is also considerably rarer. Which is why it gives me great pleasure to write about Sunshine. Not only do I get to talk about something different for a [...]
Written and Directed by Guillermo del Toro, 2006 Without question, Pan’s Labyrinth is the hitherto epoch of Guillermo del Toro’s objectively off-and-on filmography. His personal tale about the innocence of a little girl amidst a world of pain is, to say the least, bursting with imagination. Featuring not only the best makeup effects of 2006, [...]
Directed by Tom Tykwer, 2006Written by Andrew Birkin, Bernd Eichinger, Tom Tykwer, Patrick Süskind (Novel) I hate to write an introductory paragraph like this. I know there are still a crop of leftovers from 2006 I patiently await (here’s looking at you Mandy Lane, Leslie Vernon, and a Hatchet), but baring the aforementioned unseen(s), I [...]
Directed by Craig R. Baxley, Michael W. Watkins 2006Written by Laura Harkcom, Christopher Leone, Paul Workman The Sci-Fi Channel has got heart and I love ‘em for it, but their track record on original productions is pretty spotty. Which is why it brings me great, great joy to tell you, kind reader, that The Lost [...]
Written by Max Brooks, 2006 Determining the launching point for a review of Max Brooks’ newest zombie masterwork, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, is hard. It’s an odd, but welcome challenge to chose where exactly the praise should be heaped first on this fictional journalistic recount of a global undead [...]
Directed by John LandisWritten by Brent Hanley John Landis’ sophomore "Masters" entry is, thus far, the best of the series. I’d even go so far as to say that Family is the best thing the director has been involved with in excess of two decades. The elegant opening shot planted a wicked smile on my [...]
Directed by Joon-ho Bong, 2006 Expectations. I’m the first to confess my excitement regarding a film before its release, especially when said excitement borders on delirium. I’m also the first to confess my disappointment when expectations aren’t met – and typically when that happens, I cast my words into a river of sadness with anger [...]
Directed by Lucky McKee, 2006 Notice that year above. Do I put 2003, the year The Woods went into production and forced M. Night Shyamalan to re-title his then-new film to The Village? Or do I put 2006, the year that the foolishly shelved film finally saw the light of release, albeit it at a [...]
Directed by Gil Kenan, 2006 Monster House was my first theatrical exposure to 3D and it was, frankly, one of the most memorable movie experiences I’ve ever had. It doesn’t hurt that the movie hits all the right notes, but that third dimension…my god. It’s not just a gimmick, it’s not just eye candy, it’s [...]
Directed by Fred Dekker, 1986 Why did Fred Dekker stop making movies? Night of the Creeps was his first flick and while it isn’t as perfect as The Monster Squad, it is still a highly entertaining creature feature. It’s a bummer the last thing we’ve gotten from him as a director was Robocop 3… It [...]
Directed by Alexandre Aja, 2006 I remember a conversation from a few years ago between myself, my stepmom and a friend of hers. The topic was the Alien franchise and said friend was explaining that she liked all of the films except the second one because, "it put a child in danger and that is [...]
